


tempo rubato

by psalloacappella



Series: fix me with your grace [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Blank Period, F/M, Falling In Love, Gen, Love and Duty, SSBlankPeriod2021, Team as Family, They bring home a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29246784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: They speak of scars, this one that one,from the one they called Sasorishe breathes, his fingertips tracing a swift cleaving crescent,from him,he mutters, and he knows she’ll know which man simply by the smolder in his sloe and violet eyes.❦For #SSBlankPeriod2021Day 7 Prompt(s): free prompt // "From now on . . ."
Relationships: Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: fix me with your grace [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125785
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72





	tempo rubato

❦

_(we write a story)_

Hewn halves of the same whole, shadow and light.

They tell themselves to keep it simple, take it slow. This, whatever _this_ is.

The dynamic shift between them is not sudden nor gradual, but something permanent, piquant, and passionate.

Arcs of exploration, personal and entwined: They roam the edges of the world they know and the enclaves they don’t, hoping their bonding will reveal the hidden map — time reigning at the helm, the pilgrim cartographer. 

But they’ve never been blithe or unfocused, not in their goals or in the shaping of their destinies. Certainly, nothing between them has ever been anything other than a dramatic affair, enduring, and a love that every other eye can see.

“How many days has it been?” she asks him across an inn table, watching him in the dim light. 

Sasuke knows damn well she’s aware of the hours and seconds that have elapsed together; she’s far too precise for sly questions of time. _Does it matter?_

He pauses before answering, already so taken with the way she levels her gaze at him, unadorned, and knows bringing her along will be the ultimate undoing of his penance journey, the taking apart of his hard heart. Sunrise cleaving through his endless dusk.

“Months, now.” Gathering up the last shreds of meat from his bowl, he places it in hers and meets her eyes in the manner of setting dry kindling alight. 

And so it works, this restrained and sentimental pace, for a while.

_(we speed up)_

Whispers in firelight will be their foundation, the tales that will shape their future. They speak of mundanities (flowers), practicalities (weather) and dreams, some past, lost, and others transforming into hesitant, potential plans. They speak of scars, this one that one, _from the one they called Sasori_ she breathes, his fingertips tracing a swift cleaving crescent, _from him,_ he mutters, and he knows she’ll know which man simply by the smolder in his sloe and violet eyes.

Some damage gossamer, passing marks on the skin, and others rugged as mountain ranges, raised in affront. Shapes distorting and flickering in the flames. A reminder of the world they hold up, the home they must decide to recommit to, if they can.

They travel and retrace their own history, craving and dreading the point at which they meet the end if only to know the epilogue. 

But this love is unbridled, moves at breakneck speeds — years piled up with unsaid things, so it’s easy to melt, crumble, learn and map every single vulnerable inch of one another. Hearts, minds, skin. Whispering one another’s names in constant refrain.

It is a divine and breathtaking thing, to be untethered from their earthly expectations.

The rhythm of the world is a universal hum, an unbroken orbit consisting only of two.

_(we slow down)_

Swimming in a lazy river, circling as fish in paltry ponds consisting only of their dual halves, they speak of _coulds:_ Could we settle somewhere new? Is the place that birthed us a sort of destiny? Is that home, or is this, you and I, enough of an identity? 

Could our future thrive in the same place of our trauma?

Could this system, somehow, become _better?_

Balancing a brush between idle fingers, Sakura drips dry in the parched heat and nibbles the end of it in thought.

“Anything to add?” she asks. 

Sasuke swats at an insect, squinting in the high noon.

“For Kakashi?” Thinks a moment, then glances sidelong at her; at the way she holds things aloft so delicate in hands that break the earth. Heal men, and kill them on occasion. At the way she imbues such seriousness into her letters to their ex-sensei, frown rivets dashing across her forehead. At the fading water evaporating from her skin. “Ah, just to share it with the idiot.”

Lips drawn in moue, Sakura struggles not to laugh. “I can write separate letters; Kaka-sensei is busy now. Hokage things, you know?”

She watches him throw his arm against his eyes to shield them from a dazzling sun, and his quiet snicker contains multitudes, echos in a song. The expression just in that reminds her how little friction remains between them, that they’ve caught fire. 

“He can dictate to Naruto — you’ll burn out here if I let you write two,” he chides, noting the red dusting on her cheeks, suffused with glow. “I’m not quite sure how well he reads on his own anyway.”

Erupting into giggles, she shades her own eyes to stare at him with bewitching and stripped abandon. “Be nice. You know he’s next in line to lead, and no matter what he says, he’ll need you.”

Duty. It sits between them occasionally, considered and sometimes unwanted. 

“You as well.”

Before she’s laughed it off, brushed it away to avoid its grip, but he’s correct. They are fever-bound in fire to the village that will shape the future. A daunting prospect. 

“And I’ll need you too.”

Sakura’s so sure she’s misheard, but he’s closer now than a moment ago, sweeping into her orbit with his infuriating and silent speed, thumb resting gently on her blazing bottom lip.

Bringing the question into being, a fruitless thing he’d never deliberate but she never has qualms about saying.

“Do we have to go back?”

In answer he kisses her on a simmering, sunny riverbank in a way that would make their mothers blush, an apology, a wish, and this day becomes an axis even if they won’t know it for many cycles of the moon.

A pin is pressed into a shared soul map, becomes a burgeoning accompaniment, another rising phrase in their endless song.

From now on they are in harmony, particularly with something much larger than themselves. 

  
_(we return)_

Somehow it seems the village feels them coming, whispers paving the way.

Beginning with the far-flung ranging scouts and flying fast to the spry perimeter lookouts, on to the first inner circle defensive squads and, once the shinobi are identified, the hostile caution drops from their voices in a game of telephone to be replaced with a slightly manic curiosity. 

“Two,” one of them says, yanking a sweaty flak collar from his neck. 

“No,” the other says in a strident tone, waving his answer away. “There’s another with them. Three.”

Details drip in Ino’s ears, and she leaves her post in a whirlwind, a tornado of emotion whose witnessed story springboards from house to training ground to alcove to inn. 

It’s fitting that the first encounter, or reunion, occurs in the middle of a main road beginning as ringing, if loving insults but dwindling to potshots from gritted teeth and smoothing into cooing whispers as the two women, these best friends, encircle one another with shaking arms and a bundle pressed between them; the accompanying men linger at awkward edges, Sasuke betraying so little with his usual impassive expression and Shikamaru, who was tripped up in Ino’s anger along the way, keeping his hands in his pockets. 

“Oh, how _could_ you?” Ino sniffles, wiping away tears with the heel of her hand. “Can’t do anything by half-measures, no subtlety, you never could! No letter, no warning.” Here she glares at Sasuke for a moment, enough for him to cast his eyes away in at least a modest show of humility. 

The moments pile upon, become stranger and more surprising, as Ino presses her lips to the bundle in Sakura’s arms and Shikamaru sighs in not-unhappy resignation, _ah, so it is,_ and extends his hand to an unusually startled Sasuke and for a fleeting sliver-second, the corners of his mouth aren’t quite so dour.

“Who’s next?” Ino asks, tenderly flicking away a lock of Sakura’s hair. “Though by now, the whole damn town knows.”

The men shake clumsily, wary, bereft of custom.

“I’m sure you had nothing to do with that. The honorary uncle, it's only fair.”

“We have to report regardless,” Sasuke supplies quietly. Bending over the bundle and his new wife (which, Ino will rant in retrospect, seems obvious now — his unusual tenderness, his glow, men don’t glow like that for just _anyone,_ any reason!), he whispers, begins to lead her away. They walk with high heads and radiant faces.

Her jade eyes behold their new bundle, but his eyes stay, mostly, on her. 

  
  


By now the gossip’s reached his stuffy office, and though he’s never been one to put on airs or prepare for visitors, he does try to clear a free spot to be able to see over the mess of his desk, before an aide takes pity on him and handles the rest.

He will have to get a full, unadorned look at this.

She leads, of course she does — this is the love at twelve she forcibly took into her own hands, even when it pricked and bruised. Wrestled it until she won. The newlywed glow is obvious. As a shadow Sasuke sweeps in behind, but the tiny uplift of his lips is still evident.

True, then. Differences all around.

“The kids do things differently these days,” Kakashi jokes. “Have you at least considered getting married?”

“Have _you?_ ” Sasuke snarks.

Sakura shushes him gently, thumbing away some errant speck from their bundle’s chubby face. Eyes bright, they seem to dim the rest of the room as she raises them to Kakashi and asks, breathless, “Do you want to—?”

And despite his aide’s effort to clear his desk he gets up and comes around it, to them, closing the loop around a future he hopes is halcyon and new, shepherds of peacetime. 

He wonders if they’ve had their real homecoming yet, the true test — but no, he’d be able to tell. Not that the joy in Sakura’s face could possibly be more evident, and by the careful way Sasuke presses his mouth to her temple, nudges her with his nose (and there’s the glow, the one that paints great men often only because of exceptional women they love). Naruto, busy and climbing for his Hokage position but with his own recent arrival, his own legacy coming in the form of something tiny, blond, and confusing. 

The third point of their legendary triumvirate, no doubt unaware of what’s coming to his doorstep and in tow, the new member of his full life he’ll meet anew. 

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Sakura whispers, eyes shining.

A gloved hand on each head, as if they’re genin again: He’s gentle with Sakura, ruffles Sasuke’s hair with a roguish twinkle if only to provoke his trademark scowl. 

Subdued, but their sensei’s happiness sings through in the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. 

  
  


Perhaps they don’t expect Naruto to be the one they see as the door swings open; after all the last letter he sent in his untidy scrawl is still in Sasuke’s cloak pocket, unread in the wake of their universe shifting to this perennial birth that’s brought them across the world and then to their best friend’s doorstep, clutching this thing that did not exist and now _does,_ borne of them and their love; he stands there, blond hair in chaos and a strange smattering of dirt on his cheek and a rag over his shoulder covered in fluids that his friends now know will be constant, streaming, the aftermath of infants; Hinata behind him, carrying her own bundle, with the same look of frenzied-excited exhaustion but now her mouth falls into a small, round ‘o’ as she sizes up the scene faster than her darling, ditzy husband, who’s bereft of speech and straightens up from his sagging position against the door frame, stunned.

“S-Sakura-chan!” Bright ocean eyes ping from her face — beaming, because she’s already understood this wonderful coincidence and can deduce now what his message contained, she begins to weep a little, overwhelmed — to Sasuke’s, hesitant but with its own subtle change, a fleeting expression of love and pride. 

Hinata makes a comforting noise behind them, a reassuring response to Sakura’s tears, the language of women a bit quieter, something less decipherable.

“‘Ay, Sasuke you total bastard, showing up like this! Didn’t respond to my letter—”

“You ass,” Sasuke hisses, tugging fabric over one tiny ear belonging to his daughter. “She can hear that.”

“She’s in trouble anyway, with my mouth,” Sakura sighs, brushing away a tear.

Naruto’s eyes grow so wide they push the earthly bounds of his sockets. His head whips ‘round to look at his wife, their son, and snaps back just as fast to stare at his best friends.

“She?” The word comes out croaky, and Naruto’s already sniffling.

Sasuke and Sakura exchange a glance, the ghost of a knowing smile: His sentiment has always been equal parts maddening and endearing, his adoration broadcast to the entire world.

Sasuke assents with a nod, but his own voiced response emerges with surprising vibrato emotion. Perhaps to hide it, he drops his chin onto Sakura’s head, resting it there. “Yeah. A little girl.”

They should expect it, but it’s still a scuffle like old times, Naruto tackling them both, gathering them close in his way, welcoming them home from the outside world and back into his magnetism, his heart. 

“Can’t believe you — didn’t even — you just _come home_ like _this_ —”

Their greetings and scoldings and expressions of love mesh together, _can’t believe Sasuke managed it, Don’t squish her, Naruto! You idiot, It's you who’s managed it, how old, how long, where did you travel, what have you seen, how old is your son?_

“How did you know?” Naruto asks, finally allowing them to breathe. He stares at Sakura, quizzical. “Betcha missed my letter. So how’d you know it’s a boy?”

“I’m a medic, remember?” Readjusting her daughter, she extends her other hand to Hinata, gesturing so she comes closer, anticipating a deeper appreciation of a friendship they’ve already begun, a new language they’ll learn together. “Had a feeling. I just know.”

But Naruto’s tugging on them again, drawing them close and tight, rooting them to the earth and the place they sprung from, flourished and fought in, and now, where they’ve returned. 

Time slackening and quickening though never lost or stolen, occasionally rhythm-robbed but always arriving expectantly, weaving their life legends into knots.

The codetta they’ve always managed to sing together in the end. 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap!
> 
> This is a week late for reasons beyond me, work shenanigans and a lack of spark and other things, but I appreciate people who have been reading this series or even just one or two. Blank period -era is something I've not written for a lot of reasons, mostly feeling that other people have done it better and wondering what throwing my own hat in the ring would really do. If nothing else, it's yielded practice and exploration for me and hopefully, something good for you.
> 
> This probably contradicts timelines and such, and honestly, that's okay with me, for this. This was about love and friendship and duty and coming home and purpose and yada yada yada.
> 
> So! I always love hearing from people, I appreciate the love I've already been given for this short series 🥺 you're all swell.
> 
> With that, I hang out here on twt [@psalloacappella](https://twitter.com/psalloacappella) where I write and rant a lot.
> 
> If I make anything new for Blank Period, it will be added to the [Particles](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919686) series, as this series will be "closed."
> 
> If messy dark Modern AU's are of interest to you, check out [Sirens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449026/chapters/58998157)
> 
> If smut is your jam, check out [Chromatic](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100441)
> 
> Time to take a breather and realign some projects. Thank you, again, for all the love and feedback I received on this series - I was nervous about doing it for myriad reasons (bad at prompts, project-jumping, lots of "why bother?" negative nancy thoughts, etc) and it ended up being completely worth it. ❤️


End file.
